Is fiction real, to the people in the story? Or are the people fabricated, and therefore their reality fiction? If they don’t realize they are fabricated, does it matter? What if you read a fiction, but then learn it may be a book written in a different book? 

I’ve seen reviews calling attention to the use of time in Sea of Tranquility, but I couldn’t get past the existential questions of what was even real. Like in Station Eleven, we follow a few characters, but these ones do cross paths and are subtly (and not-so-subtly) influenced by each other. Each struggles with the concept of reality in their own way: a time traveller, trying to determine if our universe is actually just a simulation, while others struggle to reconcile their existence and their experiences, to varying success.

The language of this novel is poetic. I felt drawn deeply into the various settings and the characters in them. The description of a pandemic definitely brought back my own memories, given it was written during the Covid-19 lockdowns, but just as easily I was transported to a moon colony, or northern Vancouver island in the 1800s. 

This book translated very well into audio, and I didn’t lose anything by accidentally reading it before The Glass Hotel, which I also adored. I wish it hadn’t taken me so long to read it!